Link Building Strategies Every Online Business Owner Needs

So, you’ve polished off all your on-page SEO, and now it’s time to build some links. Or maybe you’ve just heard about link building, and need to learn more.

Well, luckily for you, you’ve come to the right place.

This article will explain any questions you might have and introduce you to some of the best link building strategies out there.

Sound good? Great, let’s get started:

Why Is Link Building Important for Your Business?

Before getting into why your business needs to start link building, let’s first consider what link building is.

Building links is a process to get another relevant website to place a link, naturally within their content, that points to your page.

The more quality links you have pointing to your business’s website, the easier it is to increase your rankings. But why does this work?

The simple way to think about links is by thinking of them as a vote of approval to your business. The more websites that vote (add your link), the more Google deems your content worthy of the top positions.

Google has been using links as a ranking signal since 1998, but the system was flawed.

Building links is a process to get another relevant website to place a link, naturally within their content, that points to your page. Click To Tweet

Google only judged the number of links a business had, not the quality of the links. This practice led to a massive problem of business owners and shady SEOs spamming their links wherever they could.

Since then, things have transformed; now, Google judges the links on quality over quantity. This practice helped clean up the internet and make website owners think carefully about how they build their links.

With that said, you need to work towards building as many high-quality links as you can, if you want the chance of ranking your site.

What to Look for When Building Backlinks

Now you understand what link building is and how it works, it’s time to learn what to watch out for when building backlinks for your online business.

As mentioned earlier, all backlinks are not judged equally, so what makes the perfect backlink?

There are four factors to consider when building a quality backlink, let’s take a look:

The Strength of the Domain – A strong domain is one key to building quality backlinks. You’re looking to get links from a well-known website with high domain authority.
The Strength of the Page – It’s not just the domain’s strength you need to consider; it’s the page as well. You’re looking for pages that gain a fair amount of organic traffic.
The Relevance of the Page – You need the page to be closely related to your subject matter on the other end of the link. It is essential, and Google pays close attention to this factor. As mentioned above, the days of spammy links have passed.
The Anchor Text Used – The anchor text is the word used to link to your page. You need to ensure you use a variety of anchor texts, but for optimum results, you can use a backlink checker tool to spy on your competitors and see what combination types of anchor text won them the tops spots. Then replicate it.

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Your links should include these factors where possible, if they don’t your link will hold a lower SEO value. That’s not to say it is terrible to have a mix of low, medium, and high-quality links as this build a natural-looking backlink profile. But you are more likely to pick up the lower quality links naturally.

Link Building Strategies That Boost Your Online Business

Now you understand a bit more about links and what they must comprise, it’s a good time to introduce you to some top link building strategies.

Below are some highly actionable strategies you can use to help boost your online business:

Testimonial Link Building

If you are looking for a quick, easy strategy to get started with, look no further. This strategy takes no time at all, and it will score you a powerful link.

You’re probably questioning how this fantastic strategy works. Well, fear not, I will explain all soon.

The idea is to contact the products/services you’ve used for your website and see if they would like a testimonial.

Top tip: it helps if the product is related to your niche, and you’ve used the product before.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to score your testimonial links:

Think of Products/Services You’ve Used.

The first step is to find places you can score a testimonial link from. The best way of doing this is by looking for products/services you’ve used that have:

A website
A testimonials section
Relevant to your niche
You must have used it (even if it was a free trial)

Any product or service you can think of that fits with the above is worth noting and investigating. If you can’t think of many, try Googling to see what other people in your niche are writing.

Contact the Right People

Again, this is another straightforward step. Can you see a pattern emerging?

You can reach out to them in one of two ways, using the contact form on the website or you can use dedicated tools for the job.

The best tools for this are:

For every contact you find, reach out to them offering your testimonial. Be sure to introduce yourself and show the value their tool provided you.

If they get back to you and like your idea, it’s time for the next step:

Write Your Testimonial

Again, you shouldn’t have any troubles with this part. All you need to do is make a short write up about what you like most about the service and how it helped you.

Honestly, it’s super easy and shouldn’t more than 15 minutes. Once completed, send it over and enjoy the power of the link.

Reverse Engineering Your Competitors Best Backlinks

Ok, so this is another highly effective technique that is sometimes called ‘stealing backlinks’. It’s probably the best method out there used among SEO experts.

It takes some time, but it’s worth it!

The idea is to essentially steal your competitor’s backlink profile and use it to compete or beat them.

Why do this?

Because your competitors already have a backlink profile that Google deems worthy of the top spot. It’s just common sense to use it to your advantage, and here’s why:

Your competitors will have spent a considerable amount of money and a lot of working hours trying to build and develop their profile.

And now you can come along and replicate it with very little expense.

Here’s how it works:

Find out Whom You’re Competing With

The first step is to find out whom you’re competing with for a specific keyword. You might know who they are already, but if you don’t know, finding out is simple.

They are the top websites in the search results for each keyword of the pages you wish to rank.

Make a list of them ready for the next step:

Find All Their Backlinks.

So, you know who you’re competing against; now it’s time to find their backlinks. This process is pretty simple, but to get the best results you’ll need paid tools like:

Ahrefs
SEMrush
SEO Powersuite

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By far, the best tool for this task is Ahrefs because of the extensive index of backlinks the tool provides. To find your competitors backlinks, follow these quick steps:

1. Search for your competitor’s URL in Ahrefs’ site explorer.
2. Hit the backlinks button on the left-hand side of the screen

Ahrefs will then provide you with a list of all the backlinks pointing to their page. Export the list, do this for each of your competitors.

It’s your job to go through each one on the list and ask yourself these questions:

Does it hold value?
Is it relevant?
What did they do to get the link?

For any link that doesn’t cut it, delete it from the list. It’s pretty time-consuming, but highly worth it in the long run.

You should be left with a massive list of potential linking opportunities that you know work. Why do you know they work? Because your competitors are using them; and look where they are in the rankings

Now, it’s a case of reaching out to each one. You can find the emails in the same way as the previous strategy. Make sure your pitch is unique; imagine how many generic emails website owners get.

Remember, each link pointing to your site acts as a vote of approval, and the more quality links you have, the better your website will perform. Click To Tweet

If you look like any other generic template, there’s a good chance you’re going to end up in the trash bin, or even worse, placed in spam.

If you don’t get a reply the first time, don’t feel disheartened. Sometimes their mailboxes fill up. Try a few more times.

The number of replies you get from follow-ups will surprise you.

Rounding Up

That’s just a couple of ways you can create a strong backlink profile, but if you want more strategies, click here.

Building links plays a significant part in your success, and as a business owner, it’s your job to get yourself to the top of the search rankings.

Remember, each link pointing to your site acts as a vote of approval, and the more quality links you have, the better your website will perform.

And finally, don’t forget the four pillars to a healthy backlink:

Relevancy
Page strength
Domain strength
Anchor Text

If you keep all this in mind, you’ll have no trouble pushing your pages to exactly where they deserve to be!

Link Building Strategies Every Online Business Owner Needs

Why Is Link Building Important for Your Business?

What to Look for When Building Backlinks